Interesting, Tech stuff and Beards

What a fab day! One of the best day’s conference I’ve ever had. Russell and his merry crew really over-delivered on a first-class experience. Wonderfully lo-tech but brilliantly inspiring and human. Great stuff from facilitators Johnnie and Lloyd (and his pants) and the tip top top bird Deb Kahn.

Some wonderful speakers – ones you would have heard of like Matthew Ancona, Matt Blackbeltjones and Grant McCracken and others you might not have but were just as good. See here and here for participant descriptions.

So what did I take away? Page after page of interesting thoughts about the world, how we see it and how things work. So it made me think big time. Oh, and lots of cute examples (like the knitted village or how to chop a big log up (yes, really).

But two other things stick with me 24 hours later.

One, the old adage about the future that all this technology brings us will be more human than we ever thought is true. This lot of (largely) digital thinkers were more engaged with the real world than most of their offline peers. Tech is all about people and not about tech stuff at all. Hugh repeatedly reminds us.

Also, and this may seem a little odd, but how many young fellas today have beards. Don’t know if young Guy from Elbow knows what he’s done in the last few years, but I’d say about 1/3rd of all the male delegates had beards (from several days stubble to full duelling banjo chinwear). Felt quite odd in my clean shaven look. Maybe it was on the invite and I missed it…?

Another herd-behaviour example? Or is there some other explanation for this strange face-fur?